


reflections in the waters of lethe

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [46]
Category: Final Fantasy Type-0
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Loss, Past Character Death, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 11:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21510163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Kazusa’s had an unusual amount of success at ethering Nine.
Relationships: Kazusa Futahito & Kurasame Susaya, Kazusa Futahito & Nine, Kurasame Susaya & Nine
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1377172
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	reflections in the waters of lethe

Kazusa suspected trickery.  
  
Of all the Class Zero cadets, Nine was the biggest, the strongest, and the most willing to throw a punch. In Kazusa’s estimation he was also the dumbest, but that had little bearing on Nine’s ability to know when someone was sneaking up behind him.  
  
Still, one would think that he would wise-up to the fact that going into the library led to him getting ethered on a regular basis.  
  
Honestly, Kazusa had been _so_ successful that he was starting to get a kink in his neck from dragging Nine to his laboratory. The first few times it had happened, Nine had responded with confusion and anger (“The hell is wrong with you, ya four-eyed freak?!”); but recently, he’d simply awoken without a word and wandered off, not bothering to look for Kazusa or even threaten him with reprisals.  
  
Not just that, but every time Kazusa scoped out one of the other cadets for a little ether-session, Nine seemed to be with them- and he _always_ seemed to be the one that ended up alone and most accessible, even though he barely _did_ anything in the library but bother his classmates and play solitaire at the work-desks.  
  
And so, Kazusa suspected trickery.  
  
Didn’t stop him from ethering the kid but-good, but he suspected trickery.  
  
On this particular occasion, Kazusa stared at Nine as he slept, the teenager looking for all the world as though he were just enjoying a nap in the exam chair. As had become so common now, Kazusa had the distinct itch of a feeling that he was forgetting something- not necessarily something vitally important, but something relevant to Nine and this situation that he couldn’t quite connect.  
  
The first time Kazusa had knocked him out… Hadn’t someone else been here? Kazusa could recall being nervous, as though someone had caught him drugging cadets? To date, only Emina had…  
  
…Oh.  
  
It must have been Kurasame: Forgotten friend of Kazusa and Emina, and late Commanding Officer of Class Zero.  
  
It was a purely logical deduction, because Kazusa had no memories of Kurasame, couldn’t conjure a picture of his face or a conversation that they’d shared for the life of him. All had been purged by the mercy of the Vermillion Bird Crystal, to spare him the weight of painful memories of the dead.  
  
Kazusa knew better than to say so out loud, but he wouldn’t have minded if the Vermillion Bird kept its paws to itself where his memories were concerned. His mind might be blank, but his body knew that something was missing; if what the Vermillion Bird did was so kind, why did he strain with all of his being to reach for what had been taken from him?  
  
And why, curiously, was one of Kurasame’s most hostile students allowing himself to be drugged by Kazusa so often?  
  
Questions, questions, questions.  
  
At least this one he could get answered.  
  
Kazusa waited until Nine started to stir, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms as the teenager slowly started to wake. The dose he’d given the boy this time wasn’t _quite_ as powerful as the ones he’d given him previously. He saw Nine’s eyes open briefly, like he was only somewhat conscious, before they slipped shut again and he rolled onto his side, curling up like he meant to go back to sleep.  
  
“Oh, for the love of-” Kazusa stepped over and gave Nine a shake, stepping back quickly when Nine started and began moving; he couldn’t discount the possibility of those razor-sharp reflexes throwing him into the wall. “Come on now, wake up, I didn’t get you _nearly_ so badly this time. Get up.”  
  
Slowly, Nine awoke. He pushed himself up onto his elbow, looking around the room with a furrowed brow that elongated the scar on his face; and then he sighed, forcing himself to sit up (somewhat) properly. “Shit. This again?”  
  
“‘Again?’ You sound surprised,” Kazusa drawled, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, “At first this was interesting, but now it’s just gotten weird. You’ve been _deliberately_ letting me gas you, haven’t you?”  
  
Nine frowned. “I love how you’ve made _me_ out to be the weird one here, yo.”  
  
“Deliberately putting yourself in front of me, _knowing_ that I will gas you and drag you back to my laboratory, is absolutely weird.”  
  
“So’s drugging teenagers!”  
  
Kazusa snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself- I drug _everyone._ But usually they keep their distance after it’s happened once, and yet _you_ keep coming back for more. What’s your game, Cadet?”  
  
Nine’s expression lost some of its fire. Now it became troubled, and he rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding eye-contact. “Nothing. I don’t have a game.”  
  
“Obviously you do.”  
  
“I _don’t_.”  
  
“Will your classmates respond with the same, I wonder? That Queen girl seems to be quite observant, she’ll probably have better insight into your motives-”  
  
“Aw, don’t bother her over this!” Nine growled. “Why do you even care?”  
  
“Scientific curiosity, Nine. You and your classmates are about as unique as they come, and I do have a certain fascination with you.”  
  
The quiet, uncomfortable truth was that Kazusa _was_ fascinated with the Class Zero cadets… But he also did feel a strange, nagging sort of obligation to them as well. The only valid explanation he could perceive, with such limited memory available to him, was that they were _Kurasame’s_ students. At first glance, it might seem silly: With no memory of the man, Kazusa could not say definitively whether or not Kurasame liked these cadets, or if they had liked him back. He had no idea what they had meant to him, or what he had felt for them.  
  
But… _Kazusa_ felt it.  
  
He wasn’t about to tell Nine that, of course, but it was true.  
  
Finally, it seemed that the young man had decided to let it out. “I can’t sleep.” Nine mumbled, scratching his fingers through his messy, spiky blond hair. “At first it was annoying, but on that last mission it got dangerous: I was so messed up I almost took a sword to the head, and King had to step in and save me. That hasn’t happened since we were tykes.”  
  
“Hm.” Kazusa stepped forward put a hand on Nine’s forehead- temperature was normal. He tipped the boy’s head back: Bags under his eyes, but that would happen to anyone who’d been having trouble sleeping. Kazusa moved his fingers along Nine’s neck, feeling the lymph nodes: Not swollen, so he wasn’t sick. “Any pain where I’m touching you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“In general?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Having trouble breathing?”  
  
“No. That’s Rem, yo.”  
  
Hm. Kazusa would have to investigate that later. “Your stomach- any pain or discomfort? Are you eating?”  
  
“Yeah- I mean, no pain or nothing, but I’m eating.”  
  
Kazusa pressed against Nine’s stomach. “Pain?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Kazusa pulled back, frowning as he looked Nine over. There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him, nothing obvious anyway, and the list of possibilities was shrinking. “How long have you been having trouble sleeping?”  
  
“Uh…” Nine drew his knees up to his chest, bringing his chin to rest on top of them as he thought. “I don’t… Maybe since… No, I slept fine after Ingram. It’s hard to tell, y’know? Sometimes I don’t sleep well before missions, or I lose sleep because they happen at night and I don’t sleep as long as I usually do. You get me?”  
  
“I do,” Kazusa sighed. Class Zero’s cadets were pressed to do far more than the average cadet was, and that meant that their sleep patterns were prone to significant disruption whilst traveling or on missions. “Let me rephrase: When did this become enough of a _consistent_ and _significant_ problem that you started to _allow me_ to gas you into sleep as a way of coping?”  
  
Nine was quiet for a moment.  
  
This seemed incongruent to Kazusa. Everything he knew of him was that Nine was a loud, boisterous, quick-to-action young man that was always ready for a fight. Sitting quietly and seriously contemplating _anything_ wasn’t really his style. When had this changed? Kazusa hadn’t really been paying very close attention in the weeks since Kurasame’s…  
  
…Ah.  
  
“The Battle at the Big Bridge,” Kazusa suggested, trying not to sound too certain. “Has it been going on since then?”  
  
Nine perked up, eyes wide. “Yeah! Actually, it was right after that- we got back to Akademeia and I couldn’t sleep. Not even a little. Think I was up for, like, two days before I managed to get a little shut-eye.”  
 _  
He’s been having trouble sleeping since Kurasame’s death_.  
  
One could argue that the Battle at the Big Bridge (or the Battle of Judecca, Kazusa didn’t know which front Nine had been deployed to) could have easily been enough to distress him, to cause him to lose sleep- but maybe it was the same for Nine that it had been for Kazusa, that the hole left in his life from his Commander’s departure had left him strange and empty and unable to find peace.  
  
Yes, this felt right.  
  
“You lost your Commander, did you not?”  
  
Nine frowned, looking confused. “Yeah, he helped summon Alexander. What about it?”  
  
Kazusa hesitated, considering his wording before speaking. “Has anyone close to you ever died, Nine?”  
  
The teenager shrugged. “I don’t think so, yo.”  
  
“It isn’t uncommon,” Kazusa said carefully, “For those who lose people they are close to, to experience symptoms of… Distress, I suppose you could say.”  
  
The frown deepened. “But I don’t remember the guy.”  
  
“No,” Kazusa conceded, “But if he played a particular role in your life, his absence could be affecting you adversely.”  
  
He received a blank stare in response.  
  
Kazusa sighed. “Let’s put it this way: A machine, hm? A machine doesn’t have memories. If you reach into it and take a gear out, the machine won’t remember that it had a gear there once. But regardless of whether it is _aware_ or _remembers_ the gear, it still won’t perform correctly now that it’s gone. Your Commander is gone, and so the role he played for _you_ on a daily basis is now unoccupied. Whether you remember him or not, the role that he played for you is still empty, and you are suffering distress from not having it in your life.”  
  
It seemed to be clicking. “So… I’ve got a missing piece?” Nine asked, giving Kazusa an odd look.  
  
Kazusa deflated a little: It was curiously apropos, and surprisingly heartfelt for someone like Nine. “Yes, I suppose that might be the best way of putting it. Without that piece there, your life isn’t functioning the way it used to.”  
  
Nine nodded; he definitely got the gist of it. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do about it, then? I’m not a machine, and I can’t just replace the Commander like a gear or some shit. I don’t even know exactly what he _did_ in my life, so I wouldn’t even know where to start if I was gonna replace him.”  
  
“A decent point. Fortunately, as you are not a machine, you are much more capable of adjusting to change. I would pose that it’s only been a few weeks since his death, and you haven’t had a chance to find a new routine to your life. Whatever role your Commander played will progressively be filled in by others- or, you will find new ways to fill that need yourself. It will take time for your mind and body to pave over the holes.”  
  
Nine shrugged uncertainly. “And the sleeping?”  
  
Kazusa rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well… I suppose I could assist with that.”  
  
“Do I gotta keep getting gassed by you? Because I gotta tell you, four-eyes, that’s a lot of effort just to get a nap.”  
  
Kazusa rolled his eyes. “No. I believe I can come up with something more effective than me coming into your room at night and ethering you to sleep.”  
  
“Good, because that would be creepy, yo.” He yawned, and Kazusa glanced at the bottle of ether on the table nearby.  
  
“If you’d like,” He said, “I can get to work on that solution right now. And I can gas you again so that you can sleep while I work.”  
  
Nine cocked his head. “Yeah? You’d do that?”  
  
“You certainly look like you could use it. In any case, it shouldn’t take me that long to figure something out.”  
  
“Thanks, man.”  
  
“Yes, well, consider this a thank-you for contributing so much data to my research,” Kazusa remarked as he lifted the bottle of ether and soaked a cloth with it. He handed it to Nine. “Hold this near your nose and breathe deeply. It will take a few minutes for it to take effect- I don’t intend to have you out for very long.”  
  
Nine stretched out on the chair again, settling in and breathing deeply as instructed. Even with his back to the boy and searching through his cabinets for ingredients, Kazusa could tell when Nine had finally fallen unconscious from the change in his breathing. Once he had all the components he’d needed, he went over to the chair and carefully pulled the cloth away from Nine’s face, tossing it into the garbage. The teenager was just as content in sleep as he had been a little while before, utterly without stress.  
  
“I assume, Kurasame, that you wouldn’t approve of me gassing your students,” Kazusa whispered as he set the bottles up on the counter. “But I’d like to think you’d make an exception this time.”  
  
He reached for a beaker, hesitated, and then glanced back towards Nine.  
  
After a moment, he knelt down and rummaged through one of the other cabinets, coming out with a thin blanket he sometimes used when he slept in the lab. He went back to the table and tossed it over Nine, lightly tugging it to rest properly over the younger man while being careful not to wake him.  
  
And then he went back to work, as quickly and quietly as he could manage.  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> So… This was ‘Loss of Identity’. And the way I played this one was that in forgetting Kurasame, Nine and Kazusa have lost part of their identities (or are at least confused or conflicted about them).


End file.
